The Reform Club was the only one of those splendid establishments that I visited.  Certainly the force of comfort can no farther go, nor can anything be better contrived to make dressing, eating, news-getting, and even sleeping (for there are bedrooms as well as dressing-rooms for those who will), as comfortable as can be imagined.  Yet to me this palace of so many “single gentlemen rolled into one” seemed stupidly comfortable, in the absence of that elegant arrangement and vivacious atmosphere which only women can inspire.  In the kitchen, indeed, I met them, and on that account it seemed the pleasantest part of the building,—­though even there they are but the servants of servants.  There reigned supreme a genius in his way, who has published a work on Cookery, and around him his pupils,—­young men who pay a handsome yearly fee for novitiate under his instruction.  I was not sorry, however, to see men predominant in the cooking department, as I hope to see that and washing transferred to their care in the progress of things, since they are “the stronger sex.”

The arrangements of this kitchen were very fine, combining great convenience with neatness, and even elegance.  Fourier himself might have taken pleasure in them.  Thence we passed into the private apartments of the artist, and found them full of pictures by his wife, an artist in another walk.  One or two of them had been engraved. She was an Englishwoman.

A whimsical little excursion we made on occasion of the anniversary of the wedding-day of two of my friends.  They had often enjoyed reading the account of John Gilpin’s in America, and now thought that, as they were in England and near enough, they would celebrate theirs also at “the Bell at Edmonton.”  I accompanied them with “a little foot-page,” to eke out the train, pretty and graceful and playful enough for the train of a princess.  But our excursion turned out somewhat of a failure, in an opposite way to Gilpin’s.  Whereas he went too fast, we went too slow.  First we took coach and went through Cheapside to take omnibus at (strange misnomer!) the Flower-Pot.  But Gilpin could never have had his race through Cheapside as it is in its present crowded state; we were obliged to proceed at a funeral pace.  We missed the omnibus, and when we took the next one it went with the slowness of a “family horse” in the old chaise of a New England deacon, and, after all, only took us half-way.  At the half-way house a carriage was to be sought.  The lady who let it, and all her grooms, were to be allowed time to recover from their consternation at so unusual a move as strangers taking a carriage to dine at the little inn at Edmonton, now a mere alehouse, before we could be allowed to proceed.  The English stand lost in amaze at “Yankee notions,” with their quick come and go, and it is impossible to make them “go ahead” in the zigzag chain-lightning path, unless you push them.  A rather old part of the plan had been a pilgrimage to the grave of